Argentinians love sweets a lot. They have many varieties of sweet pastry. One of them we made at home recently. It is a sweet tart Pasta Frola (it is also common for Paraguay, Uruguay, Egypt and Greece). Check the post for a detailed recipe and our experience of cooking the tart.
Preparation of Pasta Frola
I found the recipe of Pasta Frola in Internet. There are several ways to cook it, I chose one of the easiest.
Ingredients
– 2 cups of flour (I hate when they use cups in recipes, so for a better understanding 1 cup = 200 ml OR 100 g of flour);
– 200 g of sugar;
– 100 g of butter;
– 1 tea spoon of vanilla essence;
– peel of 1 orange;
– 400 g of quince cheese (quince paste) ;
– 2 table spoons of a liquor (we used honey liquor) or sweet wine (optional).
The dough for Pasta Frola
In a bowl mix butter with sugar at room temperature.
Once it is done, add eggs one after another, then little by little add flour, orange peel and vanilla essence.
The recipe offered to put the dough on the surface covered with flour to knead it. They say, if it is too sticky, add more flour; if it is too dry, add some milk.
I put the dough on a wooden board with flour, and I did not like the outcome. My dough was super sticky, it was impossible to knead it even with additional flour. So I would recommend to keep it in the bowl and knead it with a paddle.
So, knead the dough until it gets homogenous and put in a fridge for 30 minutes. Don’t forget to cover it with a film or something else so it does not get dry.
Once the dough is cooled down, take it out of the fridge. Take a round mold for the pie (ours has 30 cm diameter), grease the mold with butter and then dredge it with flour.
Distribute the dough in the mold with a thin layer, make nice borders. Do not forget to leave some dough for decoration!
Take the part of the dough that is left after you distribute it in the mold. Put it on a surface with some flour and accurately flatten it until it is around 3 mm thick. If it sticks to your hand, just put more flour on top of it.
Cut stripes around 1.5-2 cm wide. Ince the filling is in the mold, put the stripes on top and finish the borders.
Filling for Pasta Frola
Cut the quince cheese into small cubes, so it is easier to work with. Warm it up in a microwave oven or above hot water.
Once the quince paste is warm, mash it until it can be spread on the dough, add liquor and mix it well (optionally).
Spread the quince cheese on the dough evenly. Place dough stripes on top. Then put the tart in a well-heated oven and bake at 180 ºC.
Baking Pasta Frola
The time of baking in the recipe is 45 minutes. I recommend to check at 20 minutes first, and then to decide when it is ready. We had our Pasta Frola ready in 30 minutes, in 45 it would get burnt.
Once the tart is baked, leave it to cool down.
Decorating and serving Pasta Frola
Pasta Frola is served cold. I baked it in the evening and left to cool down over night. In the morning we had a nice breakfast: the tart with mAte.
In Argentina it is often that Pasta Frola is decorated with coconut flakes. We didn’t have them, so I decorated the tart with sugar powder and fresh mint.
Your Pasta Frola is ready. Bon appetit!